(Shi’ite Muslim rebels hold up their weapons during a rally against air strikes in Sanaa March 26, 2015. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah)

With Iran moving closer to a deal with world powers to constrain its nuclear program in return for an end to sanctions, Arab analysts and leaders are focused more on how Tehran is working unconstrained to tighten its grip on Arab states, from Iraq to Lebanon, and Syria to Yemen.

The man behind what some see as an attempt to create a new Persian and Shi’ite “empire” on Arab land is Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the al-Quds brigade of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Since he emerged from the shadows last autumn, Soleimani seems to be omnipresent on the battlefields of the Middle East.

Photos of Soleimani, 60, almost an invisible man until the Sunni jihadis of Islamic State (IS) overran cities in northern and central Iraq last year, are now everywhere.

He is seen directing operations in the battle to recapture from IS the Sunni city of Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein. He is snapped in Syria offering condolences on the killing of a relative of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president he has helped cling to power during four years of war.

In Beirut he is photographed praying at the grave of Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late commander of the IRGC-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group. Jihad was killed in Syria in January.

Meanwhile, the heterodox Shi’ite Houthi movement in Yemen has seized power in the capital, Sanaa, to Iranian acclaim and the alarm of Sunni Arab states such as neighboring Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival.

Such is Soleimani’s personal sway that a Syrian opposition website has put up a spoof election poster saying: “Vote for Qassem Soleimani, President of Syria.”

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mehdi predicted world oil prices could reach $70 a barrel by the end of 2015 and played down the impact of the emerging conflict in Yemen on prices.

A global slump in oil prices has slashed government revenue in Iraq, prompting the OPEC producer to renegotiate contracts with oil majors as it faces a costly military campaign against Islamic State militants.

“In January prices reached the bottom and they can’t go any lower than that,” Abdel Mehdi told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. “Now they’re going up, slowly but steadily. They will go up and maybe reach $70 by the end of the year”.

Brent oil rallied for a second straight day on Thursday to more than $59 a barrel after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies launched air strikes in Yemen, sparking fears of a wider regional confrontation that could disrupt world crude supplies.

But Abdel Mehdi said the impact of Yemen on crude prices would be short-lived: “Of course political issues such as the crisis in Yemen can give some push to the ascending line of prices, but it will have temporary effect.”

The fall in world oil prices means Baghdad is now paying companies much more than it would be under the production-sharing model followed elsewhere, and is seeking to renegotiate the terms of its contracts.

International firms operate in Iraq’s southern oilfields under service contracts, currently based on a fixed dollar fee for additional volumes produced – a formula which has seen Baghdad’s bills balloon just as its oil revenue collapses.

Abdel Mehdi said he had met with Royal Dutch Shell on Thursday to discuss amending its contract favorably for both sides, but stressed that nothing had been finalised with the major or any other company.

“We are still really in the negotiation stage. Nothing has been signed yet with any of the IOCs”, he said.

Abdel Mehdi said any revision of contracts would not result in major changes to the deals or their structure, and that a production target of 9 million barrels by 2020 remained firmly in place. “We stick with our schedules,” he said.

Iraq currently exports 2.9 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, and Abdel Mehdi said the average for March was on track to hit 3 million bpd.

The oil minister said Iraq would try to repay oil companies the $9 billion of payments they are still owed from 2014 by lifting crude from Kirkuk or Basra before the end of June.

Asked whether Iraq was concerned about the possible return of Iran to the oil market in the event a deal was reached between Iran and world powers on the nuclear issue, Mehdi said stability in the region was the most important thing.

“The gains will be much greater if we have succeeded negotiations between 5+1 with Iran,” Mehdi said even though if sanctions were lifted on Tehran’s oil sales, supply would increase, putting downward pressure on prices.

OPEC is due to meet in June, and Abdel Mehdi said he saw no sign Saudi Arabia would reduce production: “I don’t think they have the intention of doing do so. I think they are defending their market share,” he said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s President Fouad Massoum said on Wednesday that the U.S.-led coalition will soon carry out air strikes against Islamic State in the Sunni city of Tikrit, after starting aerial reconnaissance flights this week.

A three-week offensive by Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shi’ite paramilitaries has failed to flush out Islamic State fighters from Tikrit, the birthplace of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

“Since yesterday, aerial support and reconnaissance flights started in Tikrit. They first begin with reconnaissance missions; then they compile the aerial reports; and afterwards the aerial (strike) operations start,” Massoum told Reuters in an exclusive interview at the presidential palace in Baghdad.

Iraqi military commanders had asked for air strikes, while the Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias had publicly rejected the U.S. role in the campaign to retake the jihadist bastion.

Faced with the deadlock, the Iraqi government had called a halt to most operations a week ago, citing concerns about civilian and military casualties.

But Massoum made clear that the Iraqi government had decided to ask for the U.S.-led alliance’s air support in the battle.

“The Iraqi government along with residents of the area wanted an active contribution from the international coalition… The Iraqi government alone decides and no other force decides,” Massoum, a veteran Kurdish politician who became Iraq’s president last summer, said.

He also alluded to the United States’ previous hesitation to participate in battles alongside Iranian-supported Shi’ite armed factions and their Iranian advisers.

“If there were any kind of hesitation in the position of the coalition to support the (Iraqi) army and volunteers in Tikrit,” Massoum said. “It seems now that this sensitivity has ended. Of course, the participation of the coalition will have an impact.”

A senior Western diplomat told Reuters on Tuesday the Iraqi government was on the verge of requesting U.S.-led air strikes, and that the international community was ready to accept.

The president said the timing of the air strikes will be determined by Iraqi and coalition military experts.

He emphasized that the strikes would avoid the civilian populations despite Islamic State’s attempts to use civilians as human shields and clearly target its fighting positions.

Islamic State, a radical Islamist movement, which seizes to establish a medieval-style caliphate across the Middle East, seized large sections of northern and western Iraq and much of eastern Syria last year.

The Iraqi government, with its Western and Iranian allies, is now trying to recapture the nearly one-third of Iraq that the jihadists’ control, including the Sunni Muslim city of Mosul.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – With Iran moving closer to a deal with world powers to constrain its nuclear programme in return for an end to sanctions, Arab analysts and leaders are focussed more on how Tehran is working unconstrained to tighten its grip on Arab states, from Iraq to Lebanon, and Syria to Yemen.

The man behind what some see as an attempt to create a new Persian and Shi’ite “empire” on Arab land is Major General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the al-Quds brigade of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Since he emerged from the shadows last autumn, Soleimani seems to be omnipresent on the battlefields of the Middle East.

Photos of Soleimani, 60, almost an invisible man until the Sunni jihadis of Islamic State (IS) overran cities in northern and central Iraq last year, are now everywhere.

He is seen directing operations in the battle to recapture from IS the Sunni city of Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein. He is snapped in Syria offering condolences on the killing of a relative of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president he has helped cling to power during four years of war.

In Beirut he is photographed praying at the grave of Jihad Mughniyeh, son of the late commander of the IRGC-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group. Jihad was killed in Syria in January.

Meanwhile, the heterodox Shi’ite Houthi movement in Yemen has seized power in the capital, Sanaa, to Iranian acclaim and the alarm of Sunni Arab states such as neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival.

Such is Soleimani’s personal sway that a Syrian opposition website has put up a spoof election poster saying: “Vote for Qassem Soleimani, President of Syria.”

GAME CHANGER?

Iran may be serious about a nuclear deal that ends its pariah status and the crippling sanctions. But it has been maximizing its strength across the Middle East and, because Iranian forces and allied militias are spearheading the fight against IS in Iraq and Syria, Sunni Arab leaders believe the United States will do nothing to stop this.

This month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry assured Saudi leaders there would be no “grand bargain” with Tehran attached to any deal. Yet in a news conference at which Kerry acknowledged that Soleimani was involved in Tikrit, his host, Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal, almost exploded.

“The situation in Tikrit is a prime example of what we’re worried about,” said Prince Saud. “Iran is taking over Iraq.”

That is why, regional analysts say, it is not so much the prospective nuclear deal that is panicking the Gulf and its Sunni allies such as Egypt, but what a U.S.-Iran rapprochement may bring.

Sultan al-Qassemi, a commentator in the United Arab Emirates, says: “The Iranian deal is a game-changer for the region and I think it is going to encourage Iran to pursue an even more assertive foreign policy.

“This deal is the grand bargain Kerry is denying it is. It is giving Iran carte blanche in exchange for empty promises. Iran is on the ascendant. Iran has the winning hand in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.”

Riad Kahwaji, head of the Dubai-based INEGMA think tank, warned of “all-out sectarian war” between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

“The events in Iraq, Syria and Yemen indicate that Iran is on a massive offensive under the cover of a U.S.-led war on terrorism, to gain strategic depth that has extended its areas of control all the way to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.”

SECTARIAN FIRESTORM REKINDLED

The schism between Sunnis and Shi’ites dates from shortly after the dawn of Islam 14 centuries ago. In modern times, this often translated into rivalry between the Wahhabi fundamentalism of Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Shi’ite theocracy of Iran.

But the overthrow of Saddam’s Sunni minority rule by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and its replacement by a Shi’ite Islamist government under the sway of Iran has rekindled a sectarian firestorm.

The Saudis and their allies have backed Sunni forces, including rebels fighting to topple Assad. Riyadh formally backs mainstream rebels in this increasingly Sunni-Shi’ite stand-off, but support from Gulf states and nationals is believed to have reached jihadi groups.

That is certainly an alibi used by Shi’ites to justify intervention.

In Syria, when Assad seemed likely to succumb to the mainly Sunni rebellion two years ago, Iran deployed its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

Soleimani and the al-Quds brigade, created in 1980 to export Iran’s Islamic Revolution, patched together a network of loyalist militias that is now the backbone of Syrian rule.

In Iraq, after the IS eruption in mid-2014, the al-Quds commander put together a similar coalition of Shi’ite militias, first to defend Baghdad and the south and now to carry the fight northwards into jihadi strongholds such as Tikrit.

His allies in Iran, meanwhile, such as Tehran MP Ali Reza Zakani – like Soleimani, close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – boast they have three Arab capitals in the bag, Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut, with Sanaa soon to follow.

According to Iran’s Rasa new agency, Zakani said that “had Hajj Qassem Soleimani not intervened in Iraq, Baghdad would have fallen, and the same applies to Syria; without the will of Iran, Syria would have fallen”.

Describing events in Yemen as a “natural extension” of the Iranian revolution, Zakani predicted 14 of Yemen’s 20 provinces would soon be under Houthi control.

“The Yemeni revolution will not be confined to Yemen alone” he said. It would extend into Saudi territories – a reference not only to the kingdom’s long, porous border with Yemen but the Shi’ite Eastern Province where Saudi Arabia’s richest oil deposits lie.

FOUR CAPITALS IN THE BAG?

John Jenkins, until last year British ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now with the International Institute of Strategic Studies, suggests US inattention to the region’s concerns is worrying.

“Already we see Iranian officials saying that they control four Arab capitals, and we have seen Houthi delegations travel to Tehran and Baghdad. This plays into the Gulf Arab narrative that they are being sold down the river,” Jenkins says.

“The U.S. presence in the region is as strong as its ever been, but the Gulf Arabs’ questions are about the Western will to act. They’ve seen examples in Lebanon and Syria of US inaction. And Yemen is the tip of the spear as far as the Saudis are concerned. Behind Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen stands Iran.”

While the Obama administration seeks to reassure Arab allies that it remains committed to them, analysts say Washington’s priority is to stop Iran developing an atomic bomb and halt IS expansion.

“Obama believes that reaching a nuclear deal with Iran could be his foreign policy legacy. The Americans are not looking at the deal with Iran in terms of its regional impact,” says Fawaz Gerges, Middle East expert at the London School of Economics.

“The U.S. deal with Iran would deeply intensify a new cold war that has been unfolding between Saudi Arabia and its allies on one hand and Iran. It would likely pour more gasoline on the raging fires in the Arab heartland.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Syria’s envoy to the United Nations says it’s time for the United States and other Western powers to accept that President Bashar al-Assad is here to stay, and to abandon what he suggested was a failed strategy of trying to split the Middle East into sectarian enclaves.

Speaking to Reuters on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Syrian war, Assad’s long-serving U.N. ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said his president was ready to work with the United States and others to combat terrorism in the Middle East.

“We don’t want any vacuum in the country that would create chaos such as happened in Libya and Iraq and … Afghanistan,” he said. “President Assad can deliver because he is a strong president. He rules over a strong institution, which is the Syrian army. He has resisted pressure for four years.”

“He is the man who can deliver any solution,” he added.

Britain and France have rejected calls to restore ties with the Assad government. U.S. officials say there is no shift in their policy regarding Assad, even as their focus is fighting Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which is also an enemy of Damascus.

”We have been open for cooperation (with the U.S.),” Ja’afari said. “They don’t want it.”

Some European Union countries that withdrew their ambassadors from Syria are saying privately it is time for more communication with Damascus, diplomats said in February.

Diplomats say the calls have come from or would be supported by countries including Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria, Austria and Spain, as well as the Czech Republic, which did not withdraw its ambassador. Norway and Switzerland, which are outside the EU, are also supportive.

Such countries say that the threat from Islamic State has made Assad the lesser of two evils, seeing a need to re-engage with Damascus as a potential ally against the extremists, according to the diplomats.

U.S. officials at the United Nations did not have an immediate comment on Ja’afari’s latest statements.

They noted recent comments to the Security Council by Washington’s U.N. ambassador Samantha Power rejecting the argument that countries should partner with Damascus to more effectively fight extremists.

The United States and other Western powers have condemned Assad for widespread human rights violations since the uprising against his government began in 2011.

But Ja’afari insisted that keeping Assad, who was re-elected last year in a poll his foes regard as illegitimate, was the only path to peace and unity.

“NOT A SYRIAN CONFLICT”

Ja’afari said that “many European delegations” had visited Damascus to ask for strengthened anti-terrorism cooperation, without specifying which countries.

“We are telling everyone … if you want this cooperation to be fruitful you need to get back to Syria, to reopen your embassies.”

Indicating that Damascus wants Assad restored to international political legitimacy in exchange for security cooperation, Ja’afari said that “the benefit of such cooperation should be mutual … not only unilateral.”

He blasted U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy of training and arming what he described as “so-called moderate” rebels, saying it had only served to deliver weapons into the hands of Islamic State.

The training of rebels has proven difficult. The Hazzm movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm Syrian rebels, but the group’s collapse last week underlined the failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for mainstream insurgents.

“This is not a Syrian conflict,” Ja’afari said.

“It is an international terror war waged against the Syrian government and the Syrian people,” he added, referring to the tens of thousands of foreign fighters who have joined Islamic State and other jihadist group in the country.

NEW YORK, March 6 (Reuters) – Syria’s envoy to the United
Nations says it’s time for the United States and other Western
powers to accept that President Bashar al-Assad is here to stay,
and to abandon what he suggested was a failed strategy of trying
to split the Middle East into sectarian enclaves.

Speaking to Reuters on the eve of the fourth anniversary of
the Syrian war, Assad’s long-serving U.N. ambassador Bashar
Ja’afari said his president was ready to work with the United
States and others to combat terrorism in the Middle East.

“We don’t want any vacuum in the country that would create
chaos such as happened in Libya and Iraq and … Afghanistan,”
he said. “President Assad can deliver because he is a strong
president. He rules over a strong institution, which is the
Syrian army. He has resisted pressure for four years.”

“He is the man who can deliver any solution,” he added.

Britain and France have rejected calls to restore ties with
the Assad government. U.S. officials say there is no shift in
their policy regarding Assad, even as their focus is fighting
Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which is also an enemy of
Damascus.

“We have been open for cooperation (with the U.S.),”
Ja’afari said. “They don’t want it.”

Some European Union countries that withdrew their
ambassadors from Syria are saying privately it is time for more
communication with Damascus, diplomats said in February.

Diplomats say the calls have come from or would be supported
by countries including Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Bulgaria,
Austria and Spain, as well as the Czech Republic, which did not
withdraw its ambassador. Norway and Switzerland, which are
outside the EU, are also supportive.

Such countries say that the threat from Islamic State has
made Assad the lesser of two evils, seeing a need to re-engage
with Damascus as a potential ally against the extremists,
according to the diplomats.

U.S. officials at the United Nations did not have an
immediate comment on Ja’afari’s latest statements.

They noted recent comments to the Security Council by
Washington’s U.N. ambassador Samantha Power rejecting the
argument that countries should partner with Damascus to more
effectively fight extremists.

The United States and other Western powers have condemned
Assad for widespread human rights violations since the uprising
against his government began in 2011.

But Ja’afari insisted that keeping Assad, who was re-elected
last year in a poll his foes regard as illegitimate, was the
only path to peace and unity.

“NOT A SYRIAN CONFLICT”

Ja’afari said that “many European delegations” had visited
Damascus to ask for strengthened anti-terrorism cooperation,
without specifying which countries.

“We are telling everyone … if you want this cooperation to
be fruitful you need to get back to Syria, to reopen your
embassies.”

Indicating that Damascus wants Assad restored to
international political legitimacy in exchange for security
cooperation, Ja’afari said that “the benefit of such cooperation
should be mutual … not only unilateral.”

He blasted U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy of
training and arming what he described as “so-called moderate”
rebels, saying it had only served to deliver weapons into the
hands of Islamic State.

The training of rebels has proven difficult. The Hazzm
movement was once central to a covert CIA operation to arm
Syrian rebels, but the group’s collapse last week underlined the
failure of efforts to unify Arab and Western support for
mainstream insurgents.

“This is not a Syrian conflict,” Ja’afari said.

“It is an international terror war waged against the Syrian
government and the Syrian people,” he added, referring to the
tens of thousands of foreign fighters who have joined Islamic
State and other jihadist group in the country.

The barred enclosure was very much like the one in which their fellow jihadis in Syria burned alive Jordanian pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, igniting a storm across a troubled kingdom in an uneasy alliance with the West against Islamic State (IS).

The defendants did not blink when the military judge handed down sentences ranging from three to 15 years with hard labor.

The charges were comprehensive: recruiting and smuggling arms and men to fight with terrorist groups (in Syria); promoting the ideology of a terrorist group via videos on social media; oaths of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Islamic State, and inducing others to follow suit.

They had no direct link to the immolation, but one of the men’s defense lawyers, Hikmat al-Rawashdeh, said the stiff sentences had been influenced by it.

He said growing numbers had been brought before the military courts since IS killed the Jordanian pilot, whose jet-fighter crashed in its territory in December.

Officials dispute allegations of injustice. They say many of those on trial had admitted to having fought in Syria. The men said they had returned to Jordan repelled by so many executions and so much devastation. But the government fears they could be part of sleeper cells planning terrorist operations.

Therein lies the dilemma facing Jordan.

Its army and hyper-vigilant security services are widely seen as able to repulse any effort by IS – an offshoot of al-Qaeda – to expand its territory in Iraq and Syria into the desert kingdom.

Their problem is dealing with jihadi sympathizers already inside Jordan, beset on its western flank by the festering conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to its north and east by the eruption of IS and its call to regional jihad.

REFUGEES

Jordan’s East Bank tribes are the bedrock of support for King Abdullah and his Hashemite monarchy, and the backbone of his army. But they are now a minority in a small population that absorbed waves of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967, hundreds of thousands from Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion, and 1.5 million Syrians fleeing civil war.

It is inside impoverished tribal and working class Jordanian and Palestinian-inhabited cities, such as Maan and Zarqa, furthermore, that homegrown jihadis are most often to be found.

The king and his security services are therefore taking no chances.

Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani said it was to defend national security that after the murder of Kasaesbeh and the air strikes Jordan launched in reprisal on IS targets, 90 local jihadis were hunted down and arrested.

He said that Daesh – the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – “is an imminent threat for us and the region. If we leave Daesh to grow, it will expand to our border – this is a cancer that must be taken out”.

“We will not wait until the fire spreads to our house”.

Before the Kasaesbeh killing, there had been simmering discontent at Jordan’s role in the U.S.-assembled coalition against IS. There was also criticism of the decision by King Abdullah and Queen Rania to join a mass solidarity rally in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket killings in January, according to Western diplomats and Jordanian analysts.

“Tweets were circulating saying things like: ‘If you criticize the Prophet that is freedom of speech, but if you criticize the king that means the State Security court’” said one senior diplomat. “People feel that Jordan is at war but say this is not our war”.

But once the graphic video of Kasaesbeh’s killing came out, Jordanians, including prominent tribes, closed ranks behind the king. “This has removed for the time being the question of Jordan being part of the coalition, but the underlying issues are still there”, the diplomat said.

“These include political and economic reforms, fighting corruption and (alleviating) poverty, as well as the impact of these external crises on Jordan”.

CORRUPTION

Jordan has few resources of its own, chronic energy and water problems, high debt, a dilapidated education system, and a widespread perception of corruption. A debt-strapped government dependent on foreign aid can no longer resolve the problem by padding the state’s bulging payroll. The resulting anger and resentment attracts young jobless men to IS, often for a combination of ideological and financial reasons.

Diplomats and analysts estimate that between 1,500 and 2,000 Jordanians have fought in Syria, and that there are another 6,000-7,000 jihadi sympathizers inside the country.

“There is an underlying problem with the eastern tribes, which have been the bedrock of Hashemite support”, says one diplomat. “The pact has been: ‘We will give you our loyalty; you will give us (government) jobs’. But the ability to do that has diminished”.

The underlying problems, analysts and politicians say, stem from the failure of the elites to build a cohesive, inclusive modern state, that offers opportunity to its young population.

The gap between areas like the affluent Abdoun district of the capital Amman, meanwhile, with its rich, liberal and Westernized elites, and the dilapidated and teeming squalor of east Amman, where despair and poverty provide fertile ground for IS recruiters, has become glaringly wide.

“The failure of governance fed the extremist camp,” said a Jordanian politician who declined to be named.

Although the king makes a point to nurture ties to Jordan’s tribes, well-off Jordanians also live in a world cut off from religious and conservative segments hostile to their values.

Signs of this split are visible at Jordan’s state university, where a sample of students revealed starkly differing views between those studying religion and others.

Sara Majed, 21, a business student, said: “I am for Jordan taking part in the war against Daesh. The video showing the pilot burning was horrific. It was like a Hollywood movie. These people are mentally and psychologically insane. They need treatment in a mental hospital.”

Ayat Slaihat, 20, says: “Daesh has no relation to Islam whatsoever. I’m a student of history and I compare Islamic State with other Islamic states that emerged over history. No sultan, Caliph or ruler has ever committed the atrocities that Daeh did – beheadings and burning people alive. These are deviators (khawarej)”, a term that harks back to schisms in early Islam.

“THIS IS THE PUNISHMENT”

“We worry about Jordan’s stability. We saw what happened in Syria and Iraq and we don’t want to see what we built in Jordan over the past years destroyed”.

Religious students were ambiguous about the burning of the pilot, attributing the brutality to foreign agents who want to harm Islam’s image. They did not wish to give their names.

“Daesh is applying Sharia (Islamic law). The whole world was in uproar (about the burning of the pilot) but this is the punishment (al kasas); it exists in our religion,” said a young sharia student who refused to give her name.

“They applied the punishment on him for bombing people by burning him,” she added, justifying it on the grounds that the bombs he dropped were burning innocent Muslims.

Another student was convinced the atrocities attributed to Islamic State were the work of the enemies of Islam, namely Israel and the United States.

“All that is being portrayed about Daesh is wrong and aims at disfiguring the image of Islam. There could be an Israeli-American organization behind the bad propaganda against Islamic State to hurt the image of Islam”, added one sharia student.

“I wish and long to live in an Islamic State that applies Sharia. Borders don’t count; the Islamic State seeks to provide the needs of the people”.

According to Abu Mohammad al-Makdisi, an influential Palestinian-born jihadi cleric freed from jail after the pilot’s killing, the appeal of IS is growing, especially among young men looking to participate in jihad.

Makdisi, who was seen as a spiritual mentor of al-Qaeda, has denounced IS publicly for creating its so-called caliphate. His release triggered speculation the intention was to encourage him to speak out against IS. He has been in and out of jail in recent months for opposing Jordan’s involvement in the coalition – but also used as a negotiator with IS.

“THERE IS FEAR”

“Most young men here who have a simple mind are followers of Daesh”, he said. “Some went to Iraq and others to Syria, some are in contact with the Islamic State from here”.

But he said Islamic State followers in Zarqa stopped raising the IS flags and chanting pro-IS slogans after Friday prayers following the crackdown in the wake of the pilot’s killing.

“There is fear. But did the burning of the pilot change their mind about the Islamic State group? The answer is No”, he said.

“My mission is to spread awareness (of) the mistakes and deviations of Islamic State. Our book (Koran) does not sanctify the killing of aid workers, journalists and non-military people. We want to steer our youth away from the culture of slaughter.”

Though critical of IS, he says its excesses will not turn him and his followers toward the US and its local allies.

“We are against those Jihadis because they are disfiguring the image of Islam. We are against them not out of betrayal of the Islamic Caliphate or Islamic state that we dream about but because we fear for our Islam”.

VALLEY OF THE CROWS, northern Iraq, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The black
banner of the Islamic State, fixed to a shack within sight of
this frontline, is evidence of the existential threat menacing
the Kurds from across the 1,000-km long frontier.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are digging trenches and building
defense berms in Wadi al-Ghorab (Valley Of The Crows), less than
2 km away from the IS-held Sultan Abdullah village, which
demarcates the new border of their autonomous region.

The Kurds have enjoyed de facto self rule since the first
Gulf War in 1991. They are now closer than ever to achieving
their dream of full independence. Yet they are menaced by the
deadly ambitions of the Islamic caliphate across the frontline.

Not far from Wadi al-Ghorab, mostly Sunni Arab Iraqi
fighters were undergoing military training to help fight to
regain Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, and other Sunni
towns that were overrun by Islamic State last June before it
surged menacingly towards Erbil, the heart of Kurdish power.

The jihadi movement declared its cross-border caliphate last
year after seizing territory in eastern Syria and west and
northern Iraq. It now directly threatens the Iraqi Kurdish
entity across lines that lie 45 km (30 miles) from Erbil, the
bustling capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

To the southeast, Kurdish forces battled IS insurgents and
last week recaptured an oil field near the city of Kirkuk, which
Kurds seized last summer and proclaimed as their own.

“To have ISIS  we can’t sleep well,” said Fuad Hussein,
Chief of Staff to Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan. “It
means every night having a nightmare.”

TWO WORLDS

Najat Ali Saleh, a Peshmerga commander, said not a week
passes when IS doesn’t try to wage a new offensive or attack to
regain lost villages.

“They are stronger than us,” said Saleh near the Wadi
al-Ghorab frontline. “We need heavy weapons to fight them. They
have heavier weapons. We need artillery, mortars, armoured cars
and Humvees. Right now we have Kalashnikovs and machine guns.”

Across this new frontier, Sunni residents interviewed in
Mosul, just 80 km from Erbil, tell of another world under
Islamic State’s rule.

They recount tales of beheadings, executions, flogging and
stoning to death in public squares. Punishments are meted out to
Sunni Muslims seen by IS as not adhering to their nihilistic
brand of Islam. Smoking cigarettes, watching movies or even
world cup football games are all deemed un-Islamic. Music and
all forms of arts are forbidden.

IS insurgents have taken over the schools, segregating girls
from boys, even in nurseries, and changed the curriculum to
implant their vision of Islam in young minds. They have set up
military camps to train and recruit boys to replace fighters
they have lost on the battlefield, residents say.

On the KRG-run side of the frontier, Kurdistan has witnessed
not just political independence but hitherto unknown economic
prosperity over the past decade, as hotels and construction
projects mushroomed. The boom froze last year when Baghdad
stopped paying the Kurds’ share of the national budget as
punishment for the region’s move to export oil on its own terms.

BROKEN COUNTRY

For Kurds, the rise of IS has reinforced their belief that
Iraq is a broken state, that they are better off in their own
entity and that all other sects should emulate them.

From ordinary Kurds to top officials it is impossible to
find anyone who believes in Iraq as one united country. All
those interviewed want partition or at least federation.

The ties that bind Kurds with Arab Iraq are few and fraying.

Most Kurds born in the autonomous region, created after the
Kurdish uprising that followed the 1991 Gulf War, don’t speak
Arabic. Signposts along roads, on shops, military bases and
government buildings are all in Kurdish, the official language
of Kurdistan.

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Iraq, which has been
ravaged by sectarian warfare since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion
that toppled Saddam Hussein, does not exist as a unified
country.

“There is no loyalty to a country called Iraq,” he told
Reuters in an interview.

“It really is important to find a formula for how to live
together within the boundaries of what is called Iraq. Unless a
formula is found, there will be more bloodshed and the country
will remain a destabilising factor in the region.”

Pointing to Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian strife across Iraq, all
Kurdish factions agree that a unified country ruled from Baghdad
is a dream of the past and that power must be devolved to give
each of the main sects, Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds their
autonomous regions.

PARTITION ONLY SOLUTION?

But any such vision is unlikely to materialise unless they
get rid of the Islamic State first, they say.

“The only solution (to stop the bloodshed) is to partition
Iraq, everybody will be relieved. What are the benefits of
keeping Iraq united with people killing each other every day?”
said Sirwan Barzani, a prominent businessman but now a Peshmerga
commander, and also a nephew of President Barzani.

Speaking at the Black Tiger Camp, Barzani, dressed in combat
uniform, added: “At least if we can’t have independence, let’s
have three federal entities – Kurdish, Shi’ite and Sunni.”

The sense of Iraqi national identity has evaporated since
the 2003 invasion which handed power to the Shi’ites, ending
decades-old Sunni rule with the toppling of Saddam, triggering
sectarian wars and leading to the rise of radical Sunni groups,
including al Qaeda, which spawned Islamic State.

Qubad Talabani, Deputy Prime Minister of KRG, said the
reality is that a whole generation of Iraqis has grown up in a
highly sectarian environment in the last decade. “We have
Shi’ites promoting and defending Shi’ite policies; Sunnis
rallying around Sunni identity and Kurds doing the same.”

“Iraqi unity as we knew it is over, so what political system
could be devised to salvage the country? We have a model here in
Kurdistan – maybe our exact model is not applicable to Sunnistan
but some sort of autonomy is,” he said at his office in Erbil.

He said Sunnis living in scattered areas could have autonomy
within their governorates even if they don’t have a contiguous
region. “So long as Baghdad remains the centre of all decision
making people will fight over it. There’s no leader today in the
country that can talk on behalf of all Iraqis,” he added.

NO LOYALTY

Less than a generation ago tens of thousands of Kurds in
northern Iraq were victims of attempted genocide: aerial
bombardment, mass executions, chemical gas attacks and massive
displacement by Saddam’s forces. More than 4,500 Kurdish
villages were destroyed and around 1 million Kurds displaced.

The al-Anfal Campaign, known to Kurds as the Kurdish
Genocide waged by Saddam from 1986-89, is still engrained in the
Kurdish psyche. It is hard to meet anyone who hasn’t been marked
by al-Anfal, which culminated with a nerve gas attack in 1988 on
Halabja in which up to 5,000 Kurds were killed.

“I don’t feel any sense of belonging to Iraq,” said Ihsan
Sheikh Almozuril, 46, who works in a money exchange shop.

“Our loyalty is first and foremost to Kurdistan. Even when
Iraq plays a football match against another country we support
the opponent.

Sarkaft Ahmed, 18, who works in a shop selling household
appliances and speaks no Arabic said: “We want to separate from
them. Arabs are the enemy. They are treacherous and they kill.”

Ali Tahsin, 37, and whose mother is Arab and father is
Kurd, said: “Right now no Iraqi feels as though they are Iraqi -
it’s not just in Kurdistan. We are living in a country where
there is no value for human life.”

On the ground, the war in Syria and IS’s push into Iraq from
2013, have burst open the boundaries in the Middle East – fixed
after the 1916 Sykes-Picot accord, which carved up not just Iraq
but the Levant between Britain and France based on interests.

These frontiers ignored the complex ethnic, tribal and
religious differences that dominated Middle Eastern politics.
And they left the Kurdish people, estimated now at 30 million
and mostly Sunni by religion, to live as minority communities in
Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria as well as in the diaspora.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Ever since the KRG carved out a de facto independent enclave
in northern Iraq, its neighbors in Turkey, Syria and Iran have
fretted at the nightmarish prospect of a pan-Kurd state which
might incite their own Kurdish minorities to secede.

While neighbours dread Kurdish secession that might break up
their states, the reality on the ground is that the Kurds have
given birth to a nation – at least in Iraq. Three enclaves in
neighbouring north-east Syria are practically under Kurdish
control, although menaced by IS.

Kurdish officials said Kurds were fighting Islamic State for
areas that rightfully belonged to the Kurdish region but that
they would avoid using Peshmerga fighters to drive IS from Sunni
areas – much less to spearhead the recapture of Sunni Mosul.

They insist that that fight will have to be led by Iraqi
army units, mostly Sunnis.

But any recapture of Mosul seems distant. PM Barzani and
others emphasized that the timetable for such an offensive would
depend on the rebuilding of the Iraqi army, which collapsed as
IS conquered Mosul and raced across northern Iraq.

Atheel al-Nujeifi, the former regional governor who fled
Mosul when IS pushed in, said the coalition’s response has been
very slow and late. He said Mosul residents were too frightened
to revolt unless supported by a force from outside.

“We think that if there were forces close to Mosul or on the
outskirts, the city will mobilize (against IS) very quickly,”
said Nujeifi, whose properties and Arab thoroughbred horses were
looted by Islamic State, and whose Rolex watch was the one seen
on the wrist of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he appeared
at a mosque in Mosul last year to declare his caliphate.

VALLEY OF THE CROWS, northern Iraq, Feb 4 (Reuters) – The black banner of the Islamic State, fixed to a shack within sight of this frontline, is evidence of the existential threat menacing the Kurds from across the 1,000-km long frontier.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters are digging trenches and building defence berms in Wadi al-Ghorab (Valley Of The Crows), less than 2 km away from the IS-held Sultan Abdullah village, which demarcates the new border of their autonomous region.

The Kurds have enjoyed de facto self rule since the first Gulf War in 1991. They are now closer than ever to achieving their dream of full independence. Yet they are menaced by the deadly ambitions of the Islamic caliphate across the frontline.

Not far from Wadi al-Ghorab, mostly Sunni Arab Iraqi fighters were undergoing military training to help fight to regain Mosul, one of Iraq’s largest cities, and other Sunni towns that were overrun by Islamic State last June before it surged menacingly towards Erbil, the heart of Kurdish power.

The jihadi movement declared its cross-border caliphate last year after seizing territory in eastern Syria and west and northern Iraq. It now directly threatens the Iraqi Kurdish entity across lines that lie 45 km (30 miles) from Erbil, the bustling capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

To the southeast, Kurdish forces battled IS insurgents and last week recaptured an oil field near the city of Kirkuk, which Kurds seized last summer and proclaimed as their own.

“To have ISIS … we can’t sleep well,” said Fuad Hussein, Chief of Staff to Massoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan. ”It means every night having a nightmare.”

TWO WORLDS

Najat Ali Saleh, a Peshmerga commander, said not a week passes when IS doesn’t try to wage a new offensive or attack to regain lost villages.

“They are stronger than us,” said Saleh near the Wadi al-Ghorab frontline. “We need heavy weapons to fight them. They have heavier weapons. We need artillery, mortars, armoured cars and Humvees. Right now we have Kalashnikovs and machine guns.”

Across this new frontier, Sunni residents interviewed in Mosul, just 80 km from Erbil, tell of another world under Islamic State’s rule.

They recount tales of beheadings, executions, flogging and stoning to death in public squares. Punishments are meted out to Sunni Muslims seen by IS as not adhering to their nihilistic brand of Islam. Smoking cigarettes, watching movies or even world cup football games are all deemed un-Islamic. Music and all forms of arts are forbidden.

IS insurgents have taken over the schools, segregating girls from boys, even in nurseries, and changed the curriculum to implant their vision of Islam in young minds. They have set up military camps to train and recruit boys to replace fighters they have lost on the battlefield, residents say.

On the KRG-run side of the frontier, Kurdistan has witnessed not just political independence but hitherto unknown economic prosperity over the past decade, as hotels and construction projects mushroomed. The boom froze last year when Baghdad stopped paying the Kurds’ share of the national budget as punishment for the region’s move to export oil on its own terms.

BROKEN COUNTRY

For Kurds, the rise of IS has reinforced their belief that Iraq is a broken state, that they are better off in their own entity and that all other sects should emulate them.

From ordinary Kurds to top officials it is impossible to find anyone who believes in Iraq as one united country. All those interviewed want partition or at least federation.

The ties that bind Kurds with Arab Iraq are few and fraying.

Most Kurds born in the autonomous region, created after the Kurdish uprising that followed the 1991 Gulf War, don’t speak Arabic. Signposts along roads, on shops, military bases and government buildings are all in Kurdish, the official language of Kurdistan.

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said Iraq, which has been ravaged by sectarian warfare since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, does not exist as a unified country.

“There is no loyalty to a country called Iraq,” he told Reuters in an interview.

“It really is important to find a formula for how to live together within the boundaries of what is called Iraq. Unless a formula is found, there will be more bloodshed and the country will remain a destabilising factor in the region.”

Pointing to Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian strife across Iraq, all Kurdish factions agree that a unified country ruled from Baghdad is a dream of the past and that power must be devolved to give each of the main sects, Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds their autonomous regions.

PARTITION ONLY SOLUTION?

But any such vision is unlikely to materialise unless they get rid of the Islamic State first, they say.

”The only solution (to stop the bloodshed) is to partition Iraq, everybody will be relieved. What are the benefits of keeping Iraq united with people killing each other every day?” said Sirwan Barzani, a prominent businessman but now a Peshmerga commander, and also a nephew of President Barzani.

Speaking at the Black Tiger Camp, Barzani, dressed in combat uniform, added: “At least if we can’t have independence, let’s have three federal entities – Kurdish, Shi’ite and Sunni.”

The sense of Iraqi national identity has evaporated since the 2003 invasion which handed power to the Shi’ites, ending decades-old Sunni rule with the toppling of Saddam, triggering sectarian wars and leading to the rise of radical Sunni groups, including al Qaeda, which spawned Islamic State.

Qubad Talabani, Deputy Prime Minister of KRG, said the reality is that a whole generation of Iraqis has grown up in a highly sectarian environment in the last decade. “We have Shi’ites promoting and defending Shi’ite policies; Sunnis rallying around Sunni identity and Kurds doing the same.”

“Iraqi unity as we knew it is over, so what political system could be devised to salvage the country? We have a model here in Kurdistan – maybe our exact model is not applicable to Sunnistan but some sort of autonomy is,” he said at his office in Erbil.

He said Sunnis living in scattered areas could have autonomy within their governorates even if they don’t have a contiguous region. “So long as Baghdad remains the centre of all decision making people will fight over it. There’s no leader today in the country that can talk on behalf of all Iraqis,” he added.

NO LOYALTY

Less than a generation ago tens of thousands of Kurds in northern Iraq were victims of attempted genocide: aerial bombardment, mass executions, chemical gas attacks and massive displacement by Saddam’s forces. More than 4,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed and around 1 million Kurds displaced.

The al-Anfal Campaign, known to Kurds as the Kurdish Genocide waged by Saddam from 1986-89, is still engrained in the Kurdish psyche. It is hard to meet anyone who hasn’t been marked by al-Anfal, which culminated with a nerve gas attack in 1988 on Halabja in which up to 5,000 Kurds were killed.

“I don’t feel any sense of belonging to Iraq,” said Ihsan Sheikh Almozuril, 46, who works in a money exchange shop.

“Our loyalty is first and foremost to Kurdistan. Even when Iraq plays a football match against another country we support the opponent.

Sarkaft Ahmed, 18, who works in a shop selling household appliances and speaks no Arabic said: “We want to separate from them. Arabs are the enemy. They are treacherous and they kill.”

Ali Tahsin, 37, and whose mother is Arab and father is Kurd, said: “Right now no Iraqi feels as though they are Iraqi – it’s not just in Kurdistan. We are living in a country where there is no value for human life.”

On the ground, the war in Syria and IS’s push into Iraq from 2013, have burst open the boundaries in the Middle East – fixed after the 1916 Sykes-Picot accord, which carved up not just Iraq but the Levant between Britain and France based on interests.

These frontiers ignored the complex ethnic, tribal and religious differences that dominated Middle Eastern politics. And they left the Kurdish people, estimated now at 30 million and mostly Sunni by religion, to live as minority communities in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria as well as in the diaspora.

RIPPLE EFFECT

Ever since the KRG carved out a de facto independent enclave in northern Iraq, its neighbours in Turkey, Syria and Iran have fretted at the nightmarish prospect of a pan-Kurd state which might incite their own Kurdish minorities to secede.

While neighbours dread Kurdish secession that might break up their states, the reality on the ground is that the Kurds have given birth to a nation – at least in Iraq. Three enclaves in neighbouring north-east Syria are practically under Kurdish control, although menaced by IS.

Kurdish officials said Kurds were fighting Islamic State for areas that rightfully belonged to the Kurdish region but that they would avoid using Peshmerga fighters to drive IS from Sunni areas – much less to spearhead the recapture of Sunni Mosul.

They insist that fight will have to be led by Iraqi army units, mostly Sunnis.

But any recapture of Mosul seems distant. PM Barzani and others emphasized that the timetable for such an offensive would depend on the rebuilding of the Iraqi army, which collapsed as IS conquered Mosul and raced across northern Iraq.

Atheel al-Nujeifi, the former regional governor who fled Mosul when IS pushed in, said the coalition’s response has been very slow and late. He said Mosul residents were too frightened to revolt unless supported by a force from outside.

“We think that if there were forces close to Mosul or on the outskirts, the city will mobilize (against IS) very quickly,” said Nujeifi, whose properties and Arab thoroughbred horses were looted by Islamic State, and whose Rolex watch was the one seen on the wrist of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi when he appeared at a mosque in Mosul last year to declare his caliphate.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Prime Minister Tammam Salam believes a deal settling the Iranian nuclear dispute could help pave the way towards ending the political deadlock that has left his country without a president since May.

The Mediterranean country of about 4 million has been hit hard by the war in its much larger neighbor Syria, with violence spilling across the border and threatening the fragile sectarian balance that has largely held since Lebanon’s own 1975-90 civil war.

Lebanese politics – long seen as some of the Arab world’s most democratic, despite their flaws – have largely ground to a halt as a result of tensions stoked by the Syrian conflict.

Lebanon has had no president since May because lawmakers divided between Shi’ite Muslim and Sunni-led blocs have been unable to agree on a replacement. This month parliament voted to extend its own term into 2017, forgoing scheduled elections.

Salam said resolving Lebanon’s crisis would first require defusing regional tensions, possibly starting with a deal around Iran’s nuclear program, followed by an eventual resolution of Syria’s war.

“Everything is connected. If we are looking towards a solution for our presidency situation in Lebanon, we would also be looking for other solutions for the whole region,” he said in an interview at the government headquarters in Beirut. “At the moment, unfortunately, there is nothing in light yet.”

Western and Iranian officials held talks this week in Oman, with a deadline for reaching a nuclear deal less than two weeks away. No imminent breakthrough is in sight.

Lebanon can ill afford a long wait. Tourism and investment have fallen since the Syrian crisis erupted in 2011, while the political stalemate has hampered efforts tackle the substantial public debt, exploit potential off-shore gas reserves and improve shoddy infrastructure.

“I have to admit the government is working at half steam,” Salam said, urging politicians to elect a new president quickly. “Nobody can say a body without a head is a complete body, so, yes, we need a head for this country.”

VIOLENCE MAY CONTINUE

Syria-linked violence has also encroached on Lebanon, with gun battles, car bombings and rocket attacks killing hundreds of people. Islamist gunmen have fought the army in two big battles since August.

Salam, who is Sunni as required by Lebanon’s constitution, said it was unclear how many Sunni militants were in the country but said attacks could continue.

He also acknowledged the extent of outside influence over Lebanon, saying it had only once freely chosen a president without foreign interference since independence in 1943.

Salam’s own government was formed in February after nearly a year of deadlock was ended by what was widely seen as a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two regional backers of Lebanon’s political factions.

The divide between those factions, one led by the Shi’ite Hezbollah and the other by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri, is still wide. Both sides accuse the other of dragging the country further into Syria’s crisis.

Hezbollah has sent fighters to aid Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against mostly Sunni rebels, while Sunni militants have increasingly clashed with the army.

“The struggle goes on,” Salam said. “From the start I never claimed that we are going to fly high. I said we will try to avoid falling down, try to avoid the negative impact of what is happening regionally. It is not an easy thing happening.”